By Rick Stanton
I still read the newspaper. I don’t read it online because it makes my eyes hurt. This may lead most people to think that I’m old. Perhaps I am, but I’m also experienced, and that, indeed, comes with time.
An article on the front page of the Seattle Times on Saturday, August 18, reminded me of an incident that lead to Stanton & Everybody getting a really nice body of work from a big and stupid ad agency. The article (see link below) related how a big, stupid agency—in this case, Seattle City Light (SCL)—attempted to squeeze an elderly couple out of a couple thousand dollars because the agency was/is big and stupid.
Through its own incompetency, SCL put two people (who used to work for them no less!) through hell and also put the onus on them to prove that SCL was big and stupid.
For those of you old enough to remember, think of the time when the land-line phone “service”—not-so-lovingly referred to as Ma Bell—was saddled with the consumer- created tag line, “We don’t care because we don’t have to.” Consumers don’t like being squeezed. Neither do clients.
Years ago, that rather big and stupid Seattle ad agency had an account I wanted and that the agency didn’t deserve because the client was too small and they were too big. And stupid.
I knew the folks at the client and kept in touch with them, just in case the day came when they got tired of being screwed by said agency. Well, that day finally came.
I received a rather angry call from the client contact person asking me if it was normal to see a $750 fee for art direction on a bill for a radio spot. This misguided and greedy gaffe resulted in several years of enjoyable—and profitable—work for our agency.
There seems to be some correlation between the size of a company and its sense of fairness or, perhaps more accurately—its common sense. And, given the story line in the link below, its ability to right wrongs that they themselves create.
The best part of my client story was the contact person’s account of how the ad agency tried to defend the art-direction charge by saying, “Good radio has a visual component. Theater of the mind, right?” It’s actually good writing and good supervision that creates theater of the mind—not art direction.
Note to avaricious billing thieves: If you want to cheat the client out of $750, at least say production-supervision time, not art direction. Or better yet, try being honest. Someone once told me that creative gets the business and accounting loses it.
If you do read the link or have already done so, think back to a time when you were confronted with dealing with morons who are so egregiously wrong that even another moron could figure it out. Then check your blood pressure, calm down and recall the quote from Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”